Psalm 31:1 – “Back”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹In You, YHVH, I have taken refuge. Do not let me be ashamed to ages. In Your righteousness, deliver me.

It’s time for me to ponder in the Psalms for a while. I greatly enjoy all of my Bible studies. Even as I sit here typing, I think of my studies, for instance, through the book of Ruth or through I & II Peter and good memories come like a flood. Every time I crack God’s Word He teaches me amazing things and blesses me. But I have to say, there is nothing like the Psalms.

Here, it seems to me, we meet the Lord in all the greatness of His glory. Here I see His face as if I were Mary sitting there at Jesus’ feet, just enraptured in Him. In a sense, the Psalms leave behind even thoughts of my own duties and obligations, even my own service to Him. The Psalms are so all about Him. But like Mary, it is in seeing His face that I am changed. To see Him is to be changed. To see His greatness raises my meager faith. It opens my blind eyes. Seeing Him makes me want to serve Him better … and it just seems to me there is no other book of the Bible where we see Him so clearly as we do in the Psalms.

Early in my Christian life, I embarked on the habit of reading the Bible for at least 5 minutes every night before I went to sleep. That has been a blessed habit, as it allows me to read completely through the Bible, from cover to cover, about every two and a half years. Even in 5 minute increments, there are definitely some books that are hard to work through – like Leviticus – but I found the first few times through, it was particularly difficult to get through the Psalms. It just seemed so repetitive. “Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, praise the Lord.” I just didn’t “get it.” Then I read a book, “The Letters of Henry Venn.”

Henry Venn was an old reformed pastor from I think the 1700’s in England and, as they did back then, people had saved up the letters he wrote them through the years. After his death, someone gathered up a lot of them and put them together in a book. As I read those letters, as I read the words of this good godly man communicating his thoughts, desires, wishes, and concerns to his family, friends, and church members, what I saw was a man who seemed to literally breathe the Psalms. Here was a man who had so filled his heart and mind with the Psalms that they seemed to just flow out of his mouth no matter what he was saying. And of course those Psalms he verbalized were expressions of the greatness of God woven all throughout the kaleidoscope of human life.

Suddenly I saw the Psalms in a whole different light. Suddenly, they were about God woven into the fabric of my very existence. Suddenly His greatness permeated everything! And so began this lifelong love affair with the Psalms – or should I say the God of the Psalms?

The last year or two of my life I’ve made quantum leaps ahead putting worry behind me and learning to actually just be confident in the Lord all day every day. Particularly He showed me Himself in the book of Ruth and in Psalms 111,112,&113, and then in Paul’s statement in I Thes 4:11, “Make it your ambition to be quiet …” Being quiet. “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” It has been a great blessing not to have to live on the constant emotional roller coaster of fear and doubt.

When I was young I had one particularly good boss who observed what a psycho I was and told me, “Don, life is like a boat and you can live it one of two ways – you can either run to one side and just before the boat tips over, run back to the other side, and run back and forth, and you’ll stay afloat – or you can just sit on the keel.” At the time I understood exactly what he was saying – that I was driving myself crazy, but I had no idea how to change. I suppose it is sad to admit it took 40 years to finally learn but at least I am here. The Lord has finally taught me to sit on the keel – to just let Him captain the ship.

But, all of that said, I have found lately that I seem to have slidden back into my old habits. I particularly have two projects at work that are “worrying” me. I’m afraid we won’t meet the deadlines, afraid we’ll be over budget. One of them is a client who fired our company from the last project because things didn’t get done. The other is a brand new client with a nearly impossible deadline. Another project I’m involved in, there was no budget to start with and we’ve had to work on it, all the while knowing we’re losing money. All of these factors add up to losing my grip on “quiet.”

And I say all of this just to highlight what an unspeakable blessing it is to open my Bible to Psalm 31 and read, “In You, O Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame. In Your righteousness, deliver me.” 

“Never be put to shame.” That is precisely what I fear – the shame of these projects “failing.” And yet here is this verse reminding me in the Lord I’ve taken refuge. In Him I’ve put my trust. I want to be confident in Him.

Ah, the Great Physician. El Rapha – God our Healer. He knows just the medicine this weary soul needs. And when I turn to the Psalms, as so often is true, He supplies exactly that medicine.

And so, I’m thrilled to be back again, studying in the Psalms. My heart needs an infusion of quietness and confidence. I know those things come only from seeing His face – and in the Psalms, His glory overwhelms me.

Lead on, O King eternal!